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Being a professional football player can be a brutal life. Nate Jackson spent six years in the NFL, mostly as a receiver with the Denver Broncos, and while he wasn't a star or even a starter he did carve out life in the rarefied air of professional sports, and he got just as banged up as any big-name player. But he learned to play through the pain.

Jackson recounts his playing days from the glory of a touchdown pass to the meat grinder existence of life on the scrimmage line in a new memoir, Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile. "The human mind is really good at pushing pain down and away when you feel that there is a moment of glory up ahead waiting for you," he tells Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin. "In football we are always pulled along by that next game, that next play, and so I learned how to get through the next play. No matter how much pain I was in I was able to turn it off ... there's a switch that I can locate and flip that switch and I don't feel any pain."

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The 33-year-old McKinnie is an 11-year NFL veteran who has played the last two seasons with Baltimore. He played his first nine seasons with the Minnesota Vikings.

McKinnie started all 16 regular-season games with the Ravens in 2011. He started all four postseason games at left tackle in the 2012 season after playing as a reserve during the regular season. McKinnie helped provide protection as quarterback Joe Flacco threw 11 touchdowns with no interceptions in the Ravens' Super Bowl run.

McKinnie has 148 starts in 164 career games in addition to 11 playoff starts.

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